Will the new car mean new teams?
I was going to add this to another thread, but I didn't want to hi-jack or bury the notion that 2012 would be the logical time for us to see new teams join the sport since the playing field will be closer to level than it has been in a long, long time.
The obvious new teams are Sam Schmidt Motorsports, AFS, and Bryan Herta Autosport. I can't see any of them moving up before 2012 because it doesn't make sense to invest in the current Dallara with a new formula coming. Herta has been more up front about his desire to build an ICS team, he's starting to build a sponsor base (William Rast), I expect both Sebastien Saavedra him in 2011 with another Indy effort, and should be ICS ready in 2012. SSM has probably relied too much on pay drivers to have an base to move up. AFS is probably only a serious sponsor away from being a satilite team for Andretti Autosport.
The most intriguing prospect for me though is Forsythe Racing. There has been increasing speculation about Gerry for the better part of a year now, and now that the announcement is made I have to believe we'll quietly see a move from Forysthe if he's serious about returning, and there a number of signs that he's been laying in wait for everything to line up.
He not gone from the sport as a lot of people think. Indeck has been sponsoring Conor Daly since 2007, and the two have a solid relationship. While Forsythe Championship Racing has been dissolved, Forsythe Racing Performance has been steadily working with ICS teams since 2008. They have a full shop with the massively expensive seven-post shaker rig, still have Neil Michelwright, Tom Brown and others on the payroll and have been working with a number of Star Mazda, FIL and IRL teams for the past three years, so they could gear up for racing in short order.
The theory is that if they put Conor in Indy Lights next year with either their team or someone else they could put massive amounts of R&D into developing their 2012 car, because they're all going to be made available to all of the teams in 2011, and without having the time requirements of running full time in 2011 could come out of the box in 2012 with two drivers that have more time in their seats than any other driver and crews that have more experience with the chassis under more conditions that any other crew. Also, since they wouldn't be current team they wouldn't be subject to testing caps and could run as many laps as they wanted wherever they want and they have books full of notes on all the ICS tracks from working with SFR and Conquest.
Also consider this, Gerry is a part owner in Cosworth, so he has the inside track on whatever engine manufacture is considering badging their engines, so he could insure that FCR and KVRT are the two primary teams for Lotus, or whoever comes into the sport, and that means free testing miles and other corporate benefits.
He had his guys put together a DP-01 this year for a "Demo" of some kind. Rumor has it that Conor logged some test miles in secret at a track somewhere in the midwest. If I were pursuing a big sponsor to enter the sport in 2012 I'd certainly fly them into a remote location, have a car painted up in their livery, have my driver there and turn some fast laps for them at a secret test session.
